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Businesses are more likely to outsource display than PPC or social

The data comes from a new Econsultancy and Adobe report that focuses on the use of paid-for digital channels, namely paid search, display advertising and social.

The report found that display is the most likely to be managed exclusively by an agency with social the least likely to be outsourced.

Do you buy the following media in-house or are they outsourced to an agency?

Next profits boosted by online sales

Fashion retailer Next this week announced some very positive results for the half year to July 2013, with 2.2% sales growth to £1.7bn.

Online played a big part, with Next Directory sales growing by 8.3% to £597.6m, while profits were 13.4% higher at £156.1m.

Bot traffic costs advertisers £6 billion

According to Solve Media’s Global Bot Traffic Market Advisory update suspicious activity increased internationally for both web and mobile platforms – from 43% to 46% for web advertising and from 29% to 35% for mobile advertising.

For the second quarter, bot traffic patterns remained consistent in a range of 24% to 29% for web advertising and 11% to 14% for mobile advertising.

In the UK, suspicious web activity reached 44% and suspicious mobile activity hit 32%. This is higher than in the US, where suspicious web activity reached 43% and suspicious mobile activity reached 22%.

Based on current levels of bot traffic, the global digital advertising industry is on pace to waste up to £6.04 billion ($9.5 billion / €7.17 billion) in 2013 advertising to bots.

60% of businesses are integrating mobile into wider marketing activities

While this obviously means that 40% of businesses still haven’t come up with a coherent mobile strategy, it is an improvement on last year when just over half (51%) of businesses were yet to integrate mobile into their overall marketing campaigns.

The data comes from the new Econsultancy/Responsys Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2013 which contains a comprehensive analysis of the use of online and offline marketing channels, integration of display advertising and use of mobile for marketing.

Does your organisation have a strategy for integrating mobile into its broader marketing campaigns?

Students concerned about online privacy

82% of university students in the UK and US are very concerned about their privacy and security online but few are taking action to protect themselves, according to survey by AnchorFree.

The survey of 1,200 students from 523 universities found that 47% of respondents wish to keep their data private from strangers, and 27% want their personal information to be protected from friends as well.

14% of participants said they had been victims of identity theft in the past.

People hungry for iPhone information

Data from Experian shows that 1 in every 500 searches in the UK on Monday 9 September contained the word ‘iPhone’.

The most popular iPhone product being searched for last week was the iPhone 5S (23% of iPhone searches) with searches for the device proving to be six times as popular as searches for the iPhone 5C.

Web forms deterring online shoppers

New research from Ping Identity shows that lengthy and complex login processes and web forms are driving consumers away from websites.

It found that 71% of people have abandoned a ‘fill in your details’ form while 80% have been locked out of websites because they can’t remember logins.

Nearly 50% of consumers have had to reset a password, with over a fifth (21%) having to do so on a regular basis.

Over half of respondents gave up on a website because the form demanded information they didn’t have to hand.

Digital adspend on the up for publishers

The data showed that online video led the way, increasing 21.1%, followed by recruitment on 15.4% and sponsorship (up 14.9%).

Display grew 11.7% while classified advertising increased by just 0.3%.

Banks lead the way in mobile conversions

Banking and finance has the highest level of mobile conversions of any category at 54%, according to new research from xAd.

Based on a survey of 2,000 smartphone owners and user behaviour analysis of 6,000 Apple and Android users, the study also found that a mobile optimised site was crucial to driving conversions.

Location is also seen as important, as a majority of users (62% of smartphone users and 52% of tablet users) expected businesses to be within five miles of their current location.

Audi and BMW top consumer searches for cars

More than 10.7 million searches were made by UK consumers looking for cars online in August, according to a report from Greenlight.

The terms ‘Audi’ and ‘BMW’ were each queried 450,000 times, cumulatively accounting for 8% of all automotive-related searches in August. ‘Mercedes’ then ‘Vauxhall’ followed with search volumes totalling 368,000 and 301,000 respectively.

Analysis of the search data shows car dealerships made nowhere near a dent on manufacturers, with just 17,170 (0.16%) of all queries pertaining to them.

Recommended

It’s Thursday, and as our usual meme-wrangle Ben Davis is off on a well-deserved break this week, it falls to me, dear reader, to take you by the hand and hurl you into the whirling vortex of fun-ness that we call t’interweb.

Here’s a whole buncha stuff that made us shoot milk out of our noses, including tweetfails, the internet of things and the long awaited return of Batman…

Flash sales, mystery boxes, group coupons, the thrill of buying at a moment’s notice or getting unexpected delights by mail have all been in the marketing spotlight within the last year.

However, unless you take the time to carefully craft your flash sale campaign, it can go down like a lead balloon, leaving customers unimpressed and apathetic.

Here are a few examples of such sites, as well as an analysis of what they did right, and wrong. Study their successes, sidestep their mistakes, and learn from them to apply their lessons to your own campaigns.

If online video shares translated to sales then the mobile landscape would look drastically different, but unfortunately for Nokia its phones haven’t proved to be as popular as its ads.

New research from Unruly shows that Microsoft’s most recent acquisition received 17% of all online video shares among smartphone brands, second only to Samsung which dominated with more than half (52%) of shares.

Apple came a lowly third with 9.4% closely followed by Sony (7%) and Blackberry (6.7%).

However Samsung’s impressive performance is thanks to the high number of videos it has launched over the years, so it’s potentially a case of quantity rather than quality.

Companies are pouring billions of dollars a year into social media and influencer marketing campaigns, many of which target consumers on Facebook-owned Instagram, in an effort to parlay social engagement into sales.